Heinz Mack, Flügel (Wing), 1966

Heinz Mack: ZERO & More | Exhibition at Ben Brown Fine Arts

Heinz Mack, co-founder of the ZERO movement and artist behind the striking The Sky Over Nine Columns installation shown in Venice in 2014, will be given a major solo exhibition at Ben Brown Fine Arts in London this winter. ZERO & More will feature a vibrant dialogue between iconic works from the artist’s ZERO period (1950-60s), and new paintings and sculpture produced over the last five years. 

Heinz Mack, Fenster der Nacht, 1998. Image courtesy of Galerie Neher

Formed in collaboration with Otto Piene, a fellow student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the ZERO movement departed from the gestural language of European abstract expressionism and sought to reclaim an artistic purity from the ravages of the Second World War. Characterised by a minimalist, monochromatic aesthetic and a reverence for the transformative power of light, Mack described the movement as “the adventure of seeking out and discovering the still-white spaces on the map of art.”

Heinz Mack, Silber-Rotor, 1964-80

The exhibition celebrates the range and depth of Mack’s works. Termed “instruments of light” by the artist himself, each explores the myriad values of colour and motion the medium makes possible. In his early work, Mack brings a vibrating force to black and white through a tension of dynamic and static elements. Mack returned to painting in the early 1990s after moving away from the medium for more than two decades.

Heinz Mack, Vibration, 1957-58

The iridescent Mediterranean surroundings of the island of Ibiza inspired a vast exploration of the colour spectrum and saw the beginning of his “Chromatic Constellations” works. Mack uses this same elemental modulation in his most recent black and white works, Untitled (Chromatic Constellation, 2014), creating a dynamic play of patchwork.

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